The Black Hills' Sheridan Lake yields a lot of northern pike. This one was caught by a Rapid City resident near the point at which Spring Creek enters the lake. Another hot fish there this month: the yellow perch. Photo by Dick Willis.

The ice gets so thick on the medium and small lakes here that you can usually drive a vehicle out on it by this time of year. I'm not recommending that -- but many do it. When the ice gets that thick, the moaning of the lakes sways to the winter wind.

In this central segment of the ice-fishing season in the Dakotas, anglers are going after bluegills, crappie, white bass and even a few channel cats. But the main winter species remain yellow perch, walleyes and northern pike -- the coolwater species that do so well in places like this, where the water is frigid for much of the year.

What makes these fish so good for the angler is that during the coldest part of the winter, they don't lose their appetites, but keep on eating -- and attacking baits. And this winter is shaping up into what should be a good ice-fishing season. Not great, perhaps -- but certainly good.

Over on the Missouri River too the fishing will prove quite serviceable -- but, in a way, more unpredictable. The bays will eventually freeze over, but the main bodies of the big reservoirs, being huge, often don't freeze over very well. With current and shifting ice, it can be dangerous to be out on them. Many parts of the Missouri River never get fished. Thus, the bulk of our winter fishing will be had at the medium and smaller lakes. In the Dakotas, many of those are natural lakes -- and biologists report that quite a few of those smaller waters have sturdy fish populations this winter.

One of the very best, Devils Lake, has been growing astonishingly for a nearly a decade and a half, having more than doubled in size, to more than 100,000 acres, since 1993, when water levels began rising. Throughout it all it has supported an improving walleye fishery, noted Randy Hiltner, northeast district fisheries supervisor for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.

Historically, the lake has been a winter perch fishery, but recent winters have seen that fishing slow, at times even becoming downright difficult. Fortunately, Devils Lake's walleyes have really taken off, and have taken up some of the winter slack.

It's not that anglers won't catch perch in Devils Lake; that population is strong. But the past two winters' action has been inconsistent.

"It has been pretty slow," said Hiltner. "That is caused by several variables, but one thing is the densities are down. It is a combination of factors. The main reason is because they (perch) haven't had a strong hatch since 2001. There have been weaker year-classes. We saw 8-inch perch in our nets last summer, so we know there has been some reproduction -- but not to the point where we have a strong population of perch.

"We have a lot of deep water out here now. That is also a factor in making perch more difficult. Sometimes you are in 40 feet of water."